In yesterday’s newsletter, I wrote about looking for old ways to do new things. (And old ways to do old things, and new ways to do old things and new ways to do new things.)
The machine must be alive and intelligent
“The machine doesn’t write the music. You tell the machine what to do and the machine is an extension of you.”
—Laurie Spiegel“We are playing the machines, the machines play us.”
—Kraftwerk
RIP Lee “Scratch” Perry. Here are some doodles I drew while watching The Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee Scratch Perry.
Most of my favorite music that he produced — stuff like Super Ape and The Heart of the Congos — was made in his home studio — the “Black Ark” — with “just a four-track quarter-inch TEAC reel-to-reel, 16-track Soundcraft board, Mutron phase, and Roland Space Echo.” As has been noted by so many, he played the studio itself like an instrument:
I see the studio must be like a living thing, a life itself. The machine must be live and intelligent. Then I put my mind into the machine and the machine perform reality. Invisible thought waves – you put them into the machine by sending them through the controls and the knobs or you jack it into the jack panel. The jack panel is the brain itself, so you got to patch up the brain and make the brain a living man, that the brain can take what you sending into it and live.
In this amazing clip from the 1977 documentary Roots, Rock, Reggae: Inside the Jamaican Music Scene, you can see him at work in his prime:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y651C7aNXRc
Perry would do all kinds of weird stuff to get wild sounds into the music — to inject some sort of aliveness into his machines, to mix the organic into the synthetic — stuff like burying a microphone under a palm tree and beating it for a bass drum. Wikipedia:
He would often “bless” his recording equipment with mystical invocations, blow ganja smoke onto his tapes while recording, bury unprotected tapes in the soil outside of his studio, and surround himself with burning candles and incense, whose wax and dust remnants were allowed to infest his electronic recording equipment. He would also spray tapes with a variety of fluids, including urine, blood and whisky, ostensibly to enhance their spiritual properties. Later commentators have drawn a direct relationship between the decay of Perry’s facility and the unique sounds he was able to create from his studio equipment.
I don’t even know what the digital equivalent would be — opening music files in a text editor and inserting gibberish and secret messages to try to glitch the sound?
In his interview with Rick Rubin, Brian Eno, another producer famous for playing the studio like an instrument, spoke of being interested in that area between what humans can do and what machines can do.
The machines, without us, are without soul, but the machines, and our interactions with them, can also help us bring out the soul. There is a sense, at certain moments, that we are not just working in tandem, but the machine is leading us as much as we are leading it…
Questions for technology
“Look out honey ’cos I’m using technology
ain’t got time to make no apology”
—Iggy Pop, “Search and Destroy”
Here is an illustration from my book Show Your Work! riffing off of John Lennon (“I’m an artist, man. Give me a tuba, I’ll get you something out of it.”) and Brian Eno (“A lot of my ideas start with looking at a tool and thinking what else you could do with it other than what it was intended for.”)
I was much more optimistic about technology in 2013 than I am now, and as I age, I struggle to maintain my curious elder ethos while also feeling that I need to focus my finite amount of energy and time on the inquiries I’m already making and the tools I’m already using. (In other terms: exploring vs. exploiting.)
Tik-Tok, for example, makes me feel ancient. I see many cool uses of it, but none that I’m sure I want to spend any time on. This weekend a good friend of mine, an artist, was trying to explain NFTs and crypto to me, and I felt like I was talking to someone in a cult!
Knowing what’s worth spending your time and attention on is half the game in life, and, for better or worse, and probably because I’m privileged enough to hustle a little less than I used to, I tend these days to err on the side of technologies that have been around for hundreds of years, technologies like paper and pencils.
The fact of the matter is, McLuhan was right: “We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”
Technology is not just about things and devices, it is about processes and verbs. So you have to be a little careful about what technologies you adopt, because each technology is, broadly speaking, a way of doing things.
Much of my thinking about technology has been influenced by my readings of Ursula Franklin, Neil Postman, McLuhan, Ivan Illich, The Amish, Thoreau, etc., and a whole shelf-full of books my wife read in architecture grad school when she was studying Science and Technology Studies (STS).
One of the contemporary thinkers I find inspiring on the subject is L.M. Sacasas, who publishes a newsletter called “The Convivial Society.” Sacasas was recently a guest on the Ezra Klein Show, talking about his 41 questions concerning technology. Here are the first 10 questions:
1. What sort of person will the use of this technology make of me?
2. What habits will the use of this technology instill?
3. How will the use of this technology affect my experience of time?
4. How will the use of this technology affect my experience of place?
5. How will the use of this technology affect how I relate to other people?
6. How will the use of this technology affect how I relate to the world around me?
7. What practices will the use of this technology cultivate?
8. What practices will the use of this technology displace?
9. What will the use of this technology encourage me to notice?
10. What will the use of this technology encourage me to ignore?
(These questions, btw, would make an excellent structure for a book, something I hope Sacasas will consider.)
Neil Postman had his own questions for a new technology:
1. What is the problem to which technology claims to be a solution?
2. Whose problem is it?
3. What new problems will be created because of solving an old one?
4. Which people and institutions will be most harmed?
5. What changes in language are being promoted?
6. What shifts in economic and political power are likely to result?
7. What alternative media might be made from a technology?
And Wendell Berry, in his 1987 essay, “Why I am NOT going to buy a computer,” had a list of standards for adopting a new technology:
1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces.
2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces.
3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it replaces.
4. It should use less energy than the one it replaces.
5. If possible, it should use some form of solar energy, such as that of the body.
6. It should be repairable by a person of ordinary intelligence, provided that he or she has the necessary tools.
7. It should be purchasable and repairable as near to home as possible.
8. It should come from a small, privately owned shop or store that will take it back for maintenance and repair.
9. It should not replace or disrupt anything good that already exists, and this includes family and community relationships.
When I first read that list, three years before I wrote Show Your Work!, I wrote:
Berry is a farmer, practicing an ancient form of work. That is, he’s doing work that’s already been done before. Artists aren’t farmers: we’re often looking to do work that hasn’t been done before. That is, when we see a new tool, we don’t automatically think, “Well, what does it do?” we think, “Well, what *could* it do?” How could you push the tool to come up with something really interesting? (Think David Hockney and his iphone.)
How callow I was! Now I realize that some artists are farmers and some artists are pirates, and we all operate on a kind of spectrum. In the early days, I felt like I was more of a pirate, and these days I feel more like a farmer, tilling my little plot of land. (Or, okay, a pirate gardener.)
One thing I will say about these lists: they are written as a way of fortune and future-telling and anticipating what a technology might do. But you often don’t know the answers to a lot of the questions until you adopt the technology.
So it might be worthwhile to adjust the tenses of some of the questions, and use them to re-evaluate the technologies you’re already involved with. So, for example, Sacasas’s first question, “What sort of person will the use of this technology make of me?” becomes “What sort of person is the use of this technology making of me?”
The old way
My grandma Laura Helen Wilson Davis (b. 1924) died this week. On December 15, 1999, I interviewed her and my great uncle Phil (1919-2004) for a school project about their childhood living on a farm in Ohio during the depression. Phil was 80 years old, and grandma was about to turn 75. I was 16. These are my notes on what they told me.
* * *
The family was my great-grandma and great-grandpa, Austin and Jessie Wilson, and their seven children, Wells, Paul, Wayne, Phil, George, Laura Helen (my grandma), and Bob.
Every year the farm had about 100 acres of corn, 100 acres of wheat, and 100 acres of pasture. No tractors until they were out of high school. Great-grandpa liked to work with horses — he’d plow corn with two horses in one row.
They had a car, a 1916 Chevy, but no truck. Great-grandpa used to put baby calves and sheep in the back of the car.
They sometimes rode in a horse and buggy, but only for fun.
They milked cows in the morning before school. They worked in the garden, carried water to the animals.
The house had a tin roof, later replaced with slate. There was glass in the front door, so they could see who was coming. When the boys would wrestle, they’d have to put a board in front of the glass to keep them from kicking it out.
They didn’t have electricity until the Rural Electrification Administration, when they got the first lights and radio to their house.
They had little round stoves in almost every room of the farm house that burned coal and wood. In winter the snow would blow in on their beds. They had their windows open all summer. No fans until electricity.
The kitchen had a wood-burning range. When it was too hot, great-grandma used a little kerosene stove.
They took a tub upstairs with a sponge.
Because they had so many children and boys with shirts to launder, they had a gasoline-powered, one-cylinder washing machine.
They had a party line phone with a crank you turned and talked to the operator to connect you. Sometimes the women at home would just talk to the operator.
They stored food in the cellar. Potatoes, canned vegetables, fruit, and meat.
They made ice cream in a hand-turned freezer. Sometimes they went in to town to get a cone.
Great-grandpa didn’t drink anything but water and milk. No soda, root beer, or alcohol. No tobacco. He said he didn’t want to ruin good water by putting coffee in it.
The boys wore corduroy knickers, knee pants, and a shirt. They wore bib overalls to do chores. Girls weren’t allowed to wear pants, so grandma wore dresses. In the winter, grandma wore long underwear under her stockings and snow pants over her dress. Sometimes kids would dry their wet clothes on the register at school.
Grandma went to high school in the same building where I went to elementary school. In school she studied math, physics, English, history, bookkeeping, Latin, French, and physical education. Professors from the university gave free lessons, so she took violin and played in the orchestra..
They had a wind-up phonograph, but they mostly made their own music. The brothers sang in The Wilson Brothers Quartet, and everyone played an instrument: Wayne on violin, Paul on the saxophone, Wells on the piano, Phil on the trumpet, George on the clarinet, grandma on the piano.
As a high school graduation present, Phil got a radio that was 3 feet tall. It worked on something like a car battery and he had to take it to the nearest town to get it charged up.
Every Sunday morning, they would go to church. Sometimes great-grandma would stay home to cook. Sunday afternoons, there was always lots of company. People visited with each other.
They played basketball in a big round barn on the farm. My grandma met my grandpa when he came over to play ball with her brother George. My grandma played in high school for two years until the state of Ohio decided basketball was too dangerous for girls. That broke her heart.
In summer, they would go to the swimming hole at the creek and play marbles under the big maple trees. The ground was bare from so many kids running around.
It was better to live on a farm during the depression. They lived pretty well. There wasn’t much money, but they always ate. They got agricultural gas rations, so they could drive the car. My grandpa lived in town, and my grandma would bring him milk, butter, eggs, and chickens from the farm.
They always got the local newspaper, and great-grandpa got the Columbus paper, too, to know what was going on. People weren’t as interested in current events until WWII. Another time it was good to live on a farm: farmers tended not to get drafted.
Most folks thought FDR was good for the people. (Except for the “red-hot Republicans.”) The WPA and the CCC really helped.
When the oldest, Wells, went to college it was a big event. It was the first time my grandma saw her mother cry. Several of the boys went to Ohio State. Route 23 was a dirt path, and they would hitch rides up to Columbus and rent rooms. Sometimes they mailed clothes to be cleaned and ironed and mailed back. They came home for a good meal.
I asked them what they thought of young people today, and Phil said, “I think they’re growing out of their pants!”
Neither of them ever thought about making it this far.
RIP Laura Helen Wilson Davis, my grandma, who died this morning of complications from COVID-19.
Today I will listen to big band music, watch Astaire & Rogers dance, play the piano, and dream of her fried chicken and apple pie.
Here she is with my son, Owen, in better days: pic.twitter.com/RMYAUFbo0Q
— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) February 11, 2021
Neil Postman’s advice on how to live the rest of your life
I am a big fan of writer Neil Postman — especially Teaching as a Subversive Activity and Amusing Ourselves To Death, which I put at the very top of the recommended reading in Keep Going — so it was a delight to come across his general life advice compiled by his former student and colleague, Janet Sternberg, who worked closely with Postman over the years.
She begins:
A prolific writer, Postman authored numerous books, essays, articles, and speeches. Yet he never formalized in writing certain material that he presented in classes he taught at New York University in the Media Ecology Program. Almost every year, Postman ritually delivered several lectures, among them an enduring favorite which became known as his lecture on “How to Live the Rest of Your Life.” In his own personal notes, Postman titled this material simply his “Final Lecture,” describing it as “a lecture based on the supposition that American culture is in the process of decomposition. Technology has attacked all social institutions and although we may yet revive the culture, the problem to be solved is, how to survive until that happens.”
I don’t agree with all of it, but I’ve cut and pasted some of my favorites below:
2. Do not watch TV news shows or read any tabloid newspapers.
3. Do not read any books by people who think of themselves as “futurists”
7. Establish as many regular routines as possible.
11. “As a general rule, do not take in any more information after seven or eight o’clock at night.”
12. “Work, friends, and family are the areas where what you think and do matters.”
14. With exceptions to be noted further ahead, avoid whenever possible reading anything written after 1900.
16. Weingartner’s Law: 95% of everything is nonsense.
18. Take religion more seriously than you have.
19. Divest yourself of your belief in the magical powers of numbers.
20. “You should distrust writers that English professors favor… read good writers despised by English professors.”
21. Patriotism is a squalid emotion.
22. New is rotten, big is rotten, and fast is rotten.
You can read the whole thing here. Janet was also kind enough to send me a link to his rules on public speaking.
If you want to get a feel for Postman’s voice and delivery, I recommend this 1997 lecture, “The Surrender of Culture to Technology,” which includes his 7 questions for a new technology:
1. What is the problem to which technology claims to be a solution?
2. Whose problem is it?
3. What new problems will be created because of solving an old one?
4. Which people and institutions will be most harmed?
5. What changes in language are being promoted?
6. What shifts in economic and political power are likely to result?
7. What alternative media might be made from a technology?
Of course, the best way to get to know a new writer is through their books!